The Man Who
"It's more in touch with its feminine side, a gentle mental record."
"You put it on your stereo and you listen to it and that's it. I suppose
it's like buying a wooden chair that serves a purpose. You just sit on it."

Writing To Reach You"'Writing To Reach You' was actually inspired by
Franz Kafka's Letters To Felice. He wrote to this
woman he was in love with hundreds of times, yet
never met her. None of her replies are in the book,
so you have to piece together their relationship. I
was reading that one day, and 'Wonderwall' came on
the radio. I nicked the chords, then changed the
rhythm and the melody. I'm pleased we managed to
draw on Kafka and Oasis in the same song."

The Fear
"I actually wrote 'The Fear' about a year before we even had
a record deal. I was on the dole and I was scared that I was going
to get chucked by my girlfriend. I'd much
rather write about the politics of
the heart and the things that really matter to people."

As You Are
"At the end of the train journey this guy gave us this little poem
on a piece of paper: 'As you are/So once was I/Remember this, as time
goes by/As I am now/Soon you will be/Remember this, and pray for me.'
I was telling manager about that the other day, and he said: 'Right
- so that's where 'As You Are' on the new album comes from'. I
hadn't even thought about it."

Driftwood
"I was doing the dishes one day and I started singing
'You're driftwood, de de de de de de', so I ran
upstairs, put the tape on, went back downstairs and forgot
all about it. I went back to it the next day and all you
can hear is me walking about for two hours, Andy coming round,
making cups of tea, this guy coming to fix the phone and I
was going, 'I've lost it, oh fuck, I knew it had a good tune.'
Then about 30 seconds before the tape runs out I sing it again."
"I think it's about how if you go around and you don't really do anything with your life,
basically, if you act like a bit of driftwood, you'll end up like a bit of driftwood."

The Last Laugh Of The Laughter
"I wrote that on holiday in Israel, on a boat with these four
French hairdressers I'd met in the hotel. I got them to translate
lines in the song and by teh time they'd done it, I'd finished
the music. One of the girls fancied herself as a bit of a singer,
so she sang the French lines. When I listened to the tape, she was
singing it better than me."

Turn
"It was written at the same time as 'All I Want To Do Is Rock'
on this little island off the west coast of Scotland. It was
the first time I'd gone off to write somewhere, done it properly.
It's kind of a list of wishes."

Why Does It Always Rain On Me?
"Most of the time, I'm racked - there's a song on the
album called 'Why Does It Always Rain on Me?', which
is probably to do with coming from Glasgow. There's a line in
the second verse that says, 'I can't stand myself'.
It's like the line in 'The Line Is Fine' - 'Look
at me I'm so disgusting.' I'm an eternal..."
"I went on holiday after we did the first record and it was
like suppose to be sunny and it like, pissed with rain
the whole fuckin' time I was there and it was a shite
holiday but I got this song out of it. I wrote it to cheer
myself up and it's done us good."
Click here to listen to it in wav

Luv
"I wrote it when my ex-girlfriend left to go to St Andrew's University.
I was feeling really, really shit so I sent her the four-track demo. I saw her at
Christmas and said, 'Did you get it?' and she was like
'No'. But I knew it had got to her."

She's So Strange
"I saw Pyscho and it came from there. Except
the bit with the girl with the moustache, I don't know
where that came from. It rhymed with cash. It's about a woman
who rips off the company she works with. It's an old song
from five years ago."

Slide Show
"That's about the way that, if you're sitting in the car
and you hear a song on the radio, suddenly it takes you
back about ten years and all these feelings come rushing back
- to me it's like a slide show."

Blue Flashing Light
"It was recorded during a b-side session after we'd
finished the album. But it's an odd song, we couldn't
just stick it in the middle of the album bacause it'd
blow the whole continuity of gentleness, so we put it
on as a secret track. It still scares the shit out of
me cos I forget it's there."